


i'm coming (wait for me)

by gay_writes_with_mac



Series: Prodigal Son [3]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Brightwell, Dani Powell Whump, F/M, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Christianity, I contort scripture to twist it for my own purposes, I made a bad guy, Mac Was Raised Baptist And Is Angry About It On Main, Mystery, Sincerely, a gay, slaps roof of fic, take that christians, this bad boy can fit so many tropes in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: i'm coming wait for mei hear the walls repeatingthe falling of our feet andit sounds like drummingand we are not alonei hear the rocks and stonesechoing our songi'mcomingwhat can wash away my sin?nothing but the blood of jesus;what can make me whole again?nothing but the blood of jesus.A string of murders across New York City. Eighteen tortured bodies. No DNA evidence. No leads. And one missing detective.It's been forty-eight hours since anyone's seen Dani Powell and Malcolm is starting to get worried. After all, these streets aren't the safest.in fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Relationships: Dani Powell & JT Tarmel, Gil Arroyo & Dani Powell, Gil Arroyo & JT Tarmel, Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Series: Prodigal Son [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019443
Comments: 29
Kudos: 57





	1. i hear the walls repeating

Forty-eight hours.

Forty-eight hours since any of them had seen Dani. For Malcolm it was forty-nine and three-quarters.

JT had been the last one to see her, the one who set that precious forty-eight hour benchmark that they all hung onto. Because before forty-eight hours, she could have taken a sick day, her phone could be dead, she could be visiting someone, a thousand other things that they all knew weren’t true from the start but kept echoing anyway. It was like Edrisa said, trying desperately not to draw attention to the fact that she was coming up to bring a report on a body. Dani didn’t take sick days.

She hadn’t seemed stressed. Hadn’t taken any calls that made her nervous. She’d been acting like her normal sarcastic self right up until she got off her perch on the corner of her desk, smacked JT on the back of the head with a case file, stole a sucker straight off Malcolm’s desk, and bid them all a brisk goodnight before heading home to get some sleep. Her first sleep in two days, Malcolm kept coming back to.

With her background in ten different departments and the fact that even Malcolm had to admit she’d have made a damn good profiler, she’d had the lead for this case dumped on her shoulders. Gil has given it to her personally; it meant big things for her career and she’d been taking it seriously. She’d picked up some tips from Malcolm on her sleep schedule, lived off caffeine, granola bars, and the cups of tea Malcolm had poured for her during their late nights in the conference room. 

Malcolm had been quick to profile their killer as a thrill seeker: a white male who organized his killings. High IQ, most likely. Probably a history of abuse or family violence there. He killed for the fun of it; striking down young and beautiful women gave him a sense of power that he’d gotten hooked on. 

When he dealt his killing blow, Edrisa had assured them that death came within a few seconds. And she should know; she’d had eighteen of his bodies on her tables. It was a clean, deep cut to the throat that nearly decapitated them; they bled out in seconds. Before that, though, he was taking his time. Savoring it. Relishing in their pain and terror before he ended it.

Each of the eighteen bodies had been discovered so mutilated they’d had a hard time making out facial features. This wasn’t just injuries sustained in a struggle when the victims were taken; this was purposeful, deliberate torture. Edrisa had dated wounds on the bodies to be sustained up to two weeks before the coup de grâce.

“This wasn’t an act of hedonism,” he says, looking down at the bloodied, beaten body of Emmaline Rose, stretched out and stitched up on Edrisa’s table. “The wounds don’t overlap. The burns don’t either. Whatever he does this for, it’s not for the thrill of slashing and stabbing. He considers himself an artist. This...this was a labor of love.”

JT looks like there’s a fifty-fifty chance of vomiting when he says that. Malcolm can’t really blame him.

“How are we thinking Picasso here picks his victims?” he grunts, looking down at the gaping red smile between Emmaline’s head and her neck. 

“I don’t get the sense that he’s got a very discerning palate.” Malcolm clears his throat, wincing at the bad joke - their last case was a cannibal crawling through the sewers and feasting on raw human flesh. That case was the only time he’d ever seen Dani look truly rattled by a killing. “He goes after women, most likely under thirty. Usually attractive. Vulnerable in some way, emotionally or physically. He likes them dark-haired. They’ve all been brunettes.”

“That’s all you’ve got?” JT snorts disbelievingly. “‘Hot college brunettes?’ That’s a middle schooler’s Pornhub search, not a profile.”

Malcolm pauses for a second, arching one eyebrow. “What leads do _you_ have?”

The mildly abashed silence speaks for itself. JT wouldn’t apologize; Malcolm doesn’t expect him to. Finally, the other man bites the bullet and says what they’re both thinking. What they’re both too afraid to vocalize.

“You don’t think he has Dani, do you?”

Malcolm hesitates before answering, finally responding in the most even, measured tone he can muster. “I think there are at least a million women in this city who are the right age and the right type for our killer to go after. Dani does fit into his subset of victims, but so do thousands of other people. People go silent for a few days all the time. It’s...even if he does have her, there’s nothing more we can do than we’re already doing.”

Another beat between them as they both look down at Emmaline’s body. 

“You suck at reassuring.” JT turns away, waving at Malcolm to follow him. “Come on. Let’s get back upstairs.”

* * *

Every hour that gets tacked onto the invisible clock that’s been ticking in the corner of everyone’s minds since Dani went missing tacks on another five years to Gil’s life, it seems. He’s hunched over the table in the conference room when they come back up to report, fresh stress wrinkles lining his forehead. Malcolm’s convinced he’s growing grayer by the minute. “Get anything from the body?”

“Our boy thinks he’s an artist,” JT says, folding his arms over his chest as he sinks heavily into a chair.

“The wounds on the body were placed deliberately,” Malcolm clarifies. “Not overlapping. Nothing shallow, no glancing blows. He wanted each and every strike to stand out for itself. I think he’s wanting us to find the bodies. Showing off his work.”

_Somehow I feel like that’s not making it into the Metropolitan._ Is what Dani would say, if she was here. But she’s not, and instead of a quip there’s nothing but an uncomfortable pause and an exchange of a little too much eye contact between the three of them.

Gil clears his throat at last, rubbing his temple with one hand. “Any theories, Bright?”

“Not anything new,” Malcolm admits, nodding towards the evidence board. It’s sparse; terrifyingly sparse for a case that’s been open this long. “This kind of devotion fits right into thrill killers, particularly ones who have a sexual motive.”

“You think he’s jacking off to this?” JT cuts in abruptly, motioning towards the board as well.

“I think it’s a possibility. Whatever reason he had for cutting her like that, he was being careful. There’s got to be some kind of a payoff for taking his time like he did. He’s making a decision to kill, getting a weapon ready. Probably got some kind of spiel he goes through with them. Bundy wore a fake cast to get women to help him with his packages, Dahmer offered money and sex...our killer has his own method of getting people to get close to him. However he does it, he has somewhere - a secret basement, a hidden lair, somewhere he feels safe, somewhere no one else knows about - where he takes them. He stores them there, keeps them so he can get his fix inflicting wounds whenever he wants until he gets bored of them. They’re not of any more use to him after that, so he kills them. He’s not getting anything out of the killing.”

Malcolm paces slowly around the conference room, vividly aware of both their gazes upon him with some concern. His hands shake. It’s getting worse by the day without Dani. “One blow. Quick, efficient, nothing special. He kills them to get them out of the way. He’s a sadist with extreme tastes. And after that...the cycle starts over. New girl, same trick, same M.O.”

“One body at a time,” Gil reminds him. “They’re found anywhere from six days to two weeks apart. How often do you think he’s picking up a new victim?”

“They last however long his attention span does,” Malcolm explains, pointing at a snapshot of the body of Lila Hartman, sprawled out in the reeds in which she’d been discovered, mutilated nearly beyond recognition. “Something about her interested him. That’s why he kept her so long.” His finger drifts to another photograph - Maggie Willard, found stuffed behind a dumpster. “He didn’t like her. Maybe she didn’t give him the reaction he wanted, or she pissed him off, but he only had her for five days. And he’s never careful with his bodies, but he took extra time with hers. Made sure to disrespect the corpse as much as possible. However long he keeps them, only one at a time. This is personal for him. It’s intimate. He wouldn’t want to share that kind of a moment. 

“But he’s a junkie, too. He hasn’t slowed down. The bodies just keep coming in. I wouldn’t be surprised if he picks up a new one on the way back from dumping the last one.”

Gil exhales heavily through his nose, his hand curling into a loose fist atop the conference table. “Emmaline Rose was found yesterday. So we have anywhere from four days to thirteen to save the next one.”

“With no leads, no suspects, and no DNA,” JT adds. He looks like he might be taking a page out of Gil’s book in the aging-ten-years-in-ten-minutes department.

* * *

Malcolm dials her number on the way back to his apartment. Which means something real, because when she gave it to him, she told him in no uncertain terms that the only circumstance that merited calling her was at _least_ a triple homicide. He’d never understood why she hated the phone so much, but every time Gil called her for a case, her nose scrunched up and she bit into her lip just before she answered. It was a tiny tell, something it took a profiler’s eye to notice. But he’d noticed it, and he respected that wish. And not just because she’d threatened to shove his phone up his ass if he made a phone call could have been a text.

“You’ve reached Powell. Can’t take your call right now. Try again later.” There’s a small pause, and then, with the faintest hint of a laugh tinging her voice, she adds on. “Or text me. I’d like that better.” And then there’s nothing more, not even of this tiny trace of her, before the beep.

Malcolm stops dead in the middle of the street, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. Fifty-one hours, now. Fifty-one hours since he heard her voice. This canned, crackly version of it isn’t anywhere near the real thing, but it’s a piece. A hint of Dani, a reminder of who she is and that wherever she is, she’ll find her way back. She has to. 

There’s a package outside the door to his mother’s building; he nearly trips over it in his sleep-deprived haze. Barely catching himself on the doorframe, he bends down slowly, picking up the package. Wrapped in simple brown paper and tied with string. No return address or sender name. Or his address or name, either. Whoever delivered it bypassed the USPS.

Gil wouldn’t want him to open it. Knowing Gil, he’d want the bomb squad to take a look before opening up a strange package during an investigation like this one. But Malcolm ignores that - he’s always been good at ignoring advice. Careful not to tear the paper, he delicately unties the string tying the parcel together. There’s a chance they could get a fingerprint, even if their killer hasn’t left a single mark of one before. 

It’s a cassette tape. Not labeled. A little grimy. Malcolm looks up at his mother’s building, at the window he’d crashed out of not too long ago mid-night terror. 

Looks like he’s not getting away from the precinct just yet. As he turns on his heel and starts back the way he came, he’s more grateful than he should be to have an excuse to keep dodging sleep. But he can’t. Not yet. 

He’s too scared that when he closes his eyes, Dani will be there. In the worst way possible.

* * *

JT’s gone home to Tally by the time he makes it back to the precinct, but Gil’s still there. Malcolm knew he would be. Hypocrite.

“I thought you said we all needed to be resting,” he jokes weakly, stepping into Gil’s office. He looks nearly ninety in the dim nighttime lighting, his head buried in his hands as he sits alone at his desk.

“Don’t talk to me about resting.” Gil looks up at him, his gaze immediately flicking down to the tape. “Going a little old-school, aren’t we?”

“It was on my doorstep when I got home. I saved the packaging to try for a print.” Malcolm holds up the tape. “We need to watch it. This could have something to do with the case.”

“How would the killer know where to deliver it?” Gil objects, standing up anyway and coming around his desk to join Malcolm in the forefront of his office. 

“Serial killers do have a way of finding me.” He musters up a thin smile, nodding towards the conference room. “This could be the breakthrough we need.”

“Or it could be New York being New York,” Gil mutters darkly, opening the door to the conference room.

The tape goes into the player with a soft whirring noise. Malcolm sinks reluctantly into one of the hard-backed chairs, folding his hands in his lap as he looks earnestly up at the screen. _Give me a name, a street, a face, anything. I’ll take anything._

The screen crackles slowly to life, offering a grainy image of a figure sitting at what looks like a desk in a dark room. He’s got a hood pulled up over his head, but it’s what’s underneath it that makes him jump: the killer has outfitted himself in a gory mask and beak. The trappings of a plague doctor. 

“I see you’ve found my tape.” The voice, at least, is his true voice; Malcolm had half-been expecting the rumbling groans of a voice modifier. It’s a little high, but distinctly male, spiked with glee. “You have something I want, profiler. Fortunately, I have something you want as well.”

Gil’s fingers tap softly on the surface of the table. Malcolm doesn’t glance over, his trained eyes scouring every inch of the screen for anything that could lead them to their killer. 

“No one will listen. No one will _listen to me_ -” For just a moment, his voice rises to a high-pitched anger, cracking with frustration. _Emotional. Feels misunderstood._ “That reporter sister of yours will host a segment about _me._ I will call into that segment, and she interviews me. I will _make_ you all listen. And after the interview, I want the car that belongs to your boss, the keys, and one million in cash in the backseat. Leave it at the location that I tell you in the interview. Do everything I ask without fail, and perhaps she will find absolution.”

Gil inhales sharply, but before either of them can react anymore, their killer reaches out and picks up the camera, turning it around and onto a figure behind him. She’s bound to a chair, a cloth gag in her mouth keeping her silent. The blood stains are already seeping through her tattered shirt, and more blood oozes down her face from a deep cut on her temple. Her chin is tilted up proudly, and her eyes are clear of tears, but Malcolm knows fear when he sees it, and Dani, tied to that chair and bleeding, is riddled with it. He knows that look in her eyes.

The killer reaches out, fiddling with one of her perfect dark curls with a deceptive gentleness. Dani flinches away at once, a faint whimper slipping through the gag in her mouth. Malcolm grits his teeth reflexively. Underneath the table, his hands are shaking badly.

“Absolution,” the killer repeats, tugging gently on the curl. “I want my interview, detectives. By midnight Monday. Or this chance goes away.”

He knows it’s coming before it happens, but he can’t tear his eyes away when the killer produces a knife from the long black robe. Malcolm watches every horrible second of it as he presses the blade to her collarbone, takes in a long, deep breath, and then, with the detached precision of what he laughs to call a surgeon, slashes. 

And slashes. And slashes. Measured, even, thoughtful strokes, carving Dani into another one of his masterpieces. Even Gil looks away as Dani’s high-pitched, panicked screams ring through the conference room, but Malcolm can’t. Looking away feels like a betrayal. If she has to feel it, he can watch it. Use it for the profile.

Finally, the knife plunges back into the robes and he steps back, leaving Dani gasping for air. Her eyes are no longer dry. Neither are Malcolm’s.

“Monday. Interview with Ainsley Whitly. Or the next time you see your precious detective…” The killer holds up a gloved hand to reveal Dani’s badge, dangling it mockingly before the camera. “I’d start by checking the bottom of the Hudson.”


	2. the falling of my feet

JT lives fifteen minutes away from the precinct but he’s in the conference room in five. Gil looks like he’s on his deathbed, and Malcolm is bent over a notebook, scribbling away with a pencil, integrating every detail he can think of from the scene into his profile.

“Right,” JT says, clasping his hands together. He’s started pacing too, and his footfalls land heavy around the table in the conference room. “I need to see the tape.”

“You don’t want to see it,” Gil says heavily. The weight of the world rests on his sagging shoulders. “I wish I hadn’t. You don’t want to see it.”

“He’s right.” Malcolm doesn’t even glance up, already knowing that’d it make no difference. “It won’t help. The only thing that tape is good for is building the profile.”

“I need to see it.” JT stops pacing at last, staring them both down from the other end of the conference room. “She’s my partner, man. I don’t care how bad it is. I need to see it.”

In seconds, his stare goes from anger to helplessness. It’s the closest Malcolm’s ever seen JT get to worry. “She’s my _partner,_ ” he repeats, and he sounds more than a little lost.

Malcolm glances over at Gil. “I need to see it again anyway. For the profile. This is all I have to go on, I need to watch it until it’s burned into my brain. Let him see it.”

Gil still looks like he wants to disagree, but doesn’t argue. He rewinds the tape and sets it playing again. This time, he’s ready for Dani’s screams of anguish, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear, and he flinches like he’s been shot at every one of her shrieks.

By the time the video freezes with Dani’s badge dangling in front of the camera, the helplessness on JT’s face has morphed into murderousness. “Bright, you’d better find that son of a bitch _quick_ -”

“I’m trying,” Malcolm murmurs, staring down at his notebook. Trying to focus only on the neatly-ruled lines and not Dani slumped over screaming in that chair-

“I keep coming back to this - this _word. Absolution._ ” He hadn’t only circled it; he’d underlined it. Three times. “Absolution. Forgiveness, but...in a formal sense. Absolution is a definitive state of forgiveness for a sin.”

“Dani didn’t do anything wrong.” JT cuts in at once because of course he does, one fist coming down with a soft thud on the table. “She didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“Our killer thinks she did.” Malcolm gives up on the notebook and leaps to his feet, pacing about the conference room in his never-ending figure eights that Dani always claims make her dizzy just watching him. “To him, this isn’t - he thinks - in his mind-”

There’s something evading him. He can feel it. It’s critical, yet elusive. Dancing and darting about tantalizingly just out of reach, leaving him stretching and groping and trying to get hold of it.

“Oh, _Jesus._ ”

If he were holding something, he’d drop it. JT and Gil both whirl on him at once, their eyes following his pacing as if they’re watching a ping-pong match. “Talk, Bright. What?”

“Our killer’s not a sadist!” Malcolm’s hands are shaking, shaking badly, and he cracks a knuckle trying to still them.

“What I just saw on that fucking tape looked pretty sadistic to me,” JT interjects, nodding towards the VCR player and the frozen image of Dani’s dangling badge.

“It’s not! It’s not, not really - he’s not getting off on this. He doesn’t like pain!”

“Then why, Bright? Eighteen hacked-up girls in the basement say he likes pain!”

“Would you just _shut up_ and let me think?!” He’s never turned on JT like that before, but his train of thought keeps getting capsized, and he’s too close to the truth to get thrown off it now. At the edge of his consciousness, he sees JT start to get up - see Gil push him back down - none of that matters. All that matters is _this,_ this profile, this thread that could lead him to Dani-

“He’s doing it because he has to.” He comes to a dead stop in the center of the room, his chest heaving slightly. There’s probably a mad glint in his eye, his hair disheveled and his face darkened with exhaustion. “He doesn’t think he has another choice. Our killer - he’s not doing this for sexual reasons, he’s not a thrill killer at all!”

“Then what is he, Bright?” Gil demands, his own patience wearing thin. “Tell me what is going on!”

“He’s a mission killer.” Malcolm brings his hand down on the table for emphasis, half-laughing as the pieces finally click together. “ _Absolution._ He’s not doing this for himself. He’s doing it for them. For the people he kills. He thinks he’s saving them. Biblically, that’s what happens - salvation has to be paid for in blood. Our killer - he thinks he’s some kind of angel! He’s taking their blood to buy their forgiveness and then sending them to heaven, that’s gotta be it!”

Gil’s face is changing, changing from anger to something like fear. “They’re always covered in their own blood,” Malcolm pants, drawing connections from dot to dot to dot in his mind, building constellations in his profile. “Absolution - _ablution._ Ritual cleansing - he’s exacting punishment for their sins. _Metaphorically,_ Christians believe they are bathed in the blood of Christ to receive salvation, but he’s - he’s taking it more literally. When he thinks they’ve suffered enough, he washes them in their own blood - he thinks he’s setting them free.”

“Bright, talk to me. What does this mean for a profile? What am I looking for?” Gil demands, dragging over the abandoned notebook and pencil to scribble down notes.

“It’ll be a man,” Malcolm insists without hesitation. “A Caucasian male, but the age range just moved up, probably no younger than thirty-five or forty. He’s alone, lonely. This world has wronged him somehow. He’s probably been injured specifically by a woman, look for a divorce or a lawsuit against a young woman. He’s, um - he’s - he’s been raised religious, probably devoutly so. He’s a lifetime member of the same church and I’d start looking at the most stringent Baptist churches in the city. He sits alone, probably towards the back of the church, but he never misses a service. He doesn’t study theology, he doesn’t interact with the pastor - he thinks that he and he alone understands the will of God.”

“And all that bullshit about an interview with Ainsley?” JT prompts. He’s looking at Malcolm like he thinks he’s crazy and Malcolm honestly can’t blame him for it. “What’s that for?”

“...I’m not sure,” Malcolm admits. “My guess is he’s after publicity. He’s swamped. Too many souls for him to save. He’s going to try to convince other people to help him save these women.”

“One more question.” JT points back at the VCR screen, where the killer stands frozen, beak protruding like a witch’s nose. “What’s with the Halloween costume?”

Malcolm takes a moment to answer, and when he does, his own voice sounds strange even to him. “The gowns and masks of plague doctors weren’t just a uniform. They were a means of preventing contagion.

“He’s handling sinners, JT. And he doesn’t want to catch it.”

* * *

“The timeline’s moved up.” Gil folds his hands, bowing his head in frustration. “We can’t give him that interview. Which gives us until midnight on Monday to get this guy in handcuffs.”

It’s Friday night now. Not a very promising timeline for a case that’s been open for almost two months with no development other than fresh bodies.

“What happens if we can’t?” Malcolm pushes, taking a step closer. “What happens if by eleven p.m. on Monday we’re no closer than we are now?”

Gil looks him in the eyes, and although his face has aged twenty years in fifty-three hours, his gaze is steady. “We can’t give him that interview, Bright.”

“Why _not?_ Ainsley interviewed _The Surgeon,_ she’d love to chat with another nutjob-”

“This has nothing to do with Ainsley.” Gil remains steady, staring Malcolm down. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists, Bright. Especially not terrorists that are itching to call on every other religious sociopath in the country to join the cause. You said it yourself. This interview isn’t an ego stroke, it’s a targeted plan to reach more victims, maybe all across the country. We can’t let him start that kind of violence.”

“If we don’t give him the interview, he’ll _kill_ Dani. He’ll kill her and he’ll dump her body like he did the rest of them. She is going to _die,_ and you want to talk about ‘not negotiating with terrorists?’”

“If we give him what he wants, he’ll start a mass wave of religiously-fueled terrorism against anyone who could be perceived as a sinner in this country and buy himself a million-dollar life, somewhere we will never, ever find him. Do you know how many people live in this country that are just _waiting_ for something to set them off?” Gil sets his jaw firmly, giving Malcolm a look to rival his mother’s for sternness. “Do you want to bet that there won’t be many? Do you want to take that risk?”

“I _want_ to get Dani back,” Malcolm says quietly. His hands are shaking so bad that he balls them up into fists and then they still shake, quivering so badly at his sides that Gil’s eyes finally drop from his face to his hands.

“Then go with JT and start talking to pastors. That’s how we save Dani. We do things the right way. Not through blackmail.”

As soon as Malcolm lands fuming in the passenger seat of JT’s car, he’s digging in his coat pocket for his phone. He’s halfway through dialing Ainsley’s number when JT stops him. “Who are you calling?”

“My sister. She needs to get questions ready, to do the interview-”

“Bright. Shut your damn Harvard mouth and think for a minute. Not about what you want, about what Dani wants.”

Malcolm opens his mouth, almost on reflex, but JT stops him by putting up a hand. His eyes are still fixated on the road. “We got it. You’d move Heaven and Earth to get her back, you’ve made your point. You don’t think I would too? Don’t think Gil would in a heartbeat? But think, genius. Not just about seeing her again, about what she’d really, really want. How do you think she’d feel, huh? If Gil’s right? If you swapped the lives of anyone else who gets killed for religious reasons for hers?”

Malcolm shuts his mouth again. JT hesitates - he’s having a hard time getting the words out. “Every time she hears about someone who got killed by a religious nut, she’ll have to wonder if they died because she didn’t. And if Gil’s right - and he always is - she’d be doing a whole lot of wondering. How do you think she’d feel? And don’t bother answering, ‘cause I’ll tell you. She’d hate it. She’d rather be dead than be living on borrowed time, Bright.”

There’s another long pause, and JT’s voice is even gruffer than usual when he speaks again. “So we’re going to find her before Monday night. And there are not any other options. _Especially_ not giving him that interview. Are we clear on that?”

Malcolm silently stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

* * *

It’s been a long time since Malcolm was in a church. Not since he was a child, and even then, he only went when his grandmother brought him. Even now, his memories of church are more like memories of his grandmother, in which the church she brought him and Ainsley along to appeared as a background character, a setting for his memories.

Now he’s been in ten of them and his head aches from the same questions over and over. No one knows anything. Or maybe the pastors are just protecting their flocks. Either way, they’re no closer than they were in the morning and now there’s less than forty-eight hours left to find her.

He listens to her voicemail again on the way home. “You’ve reached Powell. Can’t take your call right now. Try again later. Or text me. I’d like that better.” Malcolm listens to her voice and tries not to think about a world where the only way he can hear it again is through this tiny ten-second recording. 

There’s no mysterious package waiting for him when he gets home. No excuse for him to buck Gil’s orders and stay awake. Sunshine chirps in her cage and as dead on his feet as he is, he stops to feed her. Opens the cage door and lets her perch on his hand. 

God, it must be nice to be a bird sometimes.

He barely gets his hands in the restraints before sleep comes for him. That never happens, but it has been three days since the last time he let his eyes close.

* * *

“Bright. Bright, wake up.”

There’s a firm hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Malcolm opens his eyes drowsily; sun is pouring in through the windows. Gil half-kneels by the edge of his bed, giving him another shake as he wakes up. “Bright, listen.”

“Mm…? What’s...what’s going on…?” Malcolm sits up, shaking his hands out of their restraints. Gil wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t serious.

Gil’s hand remains on his shoulder, and his grip is oddly tight. “They were dredging the Hudson this morning and they found Dani’s body at the bottom. Just like he said. She’s gone, Bright.”

_Found Dani’s body._

_She’s gone, Bright._

_Dani’s body._

_She’s gone._

_Dani’s gone, Bright._

_Dani’s gone._

_Dani._

He jerks up, bolt-upright, his back against the headboard. And there she is, crumpled in a heap on his living room rug and drowning in a soaked leather jacket, her curls still slicked down with river water. Malcolm gets up, his feet piloting him over to her while his body’s still in shock - he can hear his own footsteps pounding on the floorboards.

His knees scream in protest when he falls down onto them at her side. Her beautiful brown eyes stare emptily into his, cold and glassy and _dead -_ his hand goes to her cheek, and her skin is cold with the current of the river-

Malcolm cradles her cheek in his hand and then her head _turns,_ and it’s only hanging on by a thread from where the bastard slit her throat - the gaping crimson smile grins up at him as her head rolls limp and dead to the side-

And then, at _last,_ he wakes up screaming. His wrists are raw from the restraints and he put a crack in his mouthguard, but Dani’s still breathing out there somewhere. She’s not sprawled out on his rug, not floating in the Hudson-

She’s _alive._

He has to remember that.


	3. and it sounds like drumming

Malcolm knows the pastor knows the killer before the pastor does. He’s barely three sentences into his profile when his mouth puckers up like he just swallowed a lemon and his hands start wringing. Tells he could spot from space. “You know who it is,” he pushes. “You know who’s doing this.”

Pastor Whitman pauses; hesitates. Reluctant to give up a member of his congregation. If it was any lesser crime, Malcolm could understand that. From the theology he picked up spending hours at night picking apart his personal library for religiously-motivated serial killers, he knows that pastors are naturally protective of the people they teach.  _ Shepherds of a flock,  _ he remembers reading.  _ Tasked with the protection of the sheep.  _

“Pastor Whitman,” he says again, and for once, his hands aren’t shaking. “Someone out there is killing young women, and you know who. He has one of our detectives, and she’s running out of time. You need to tell us who it is.”

The sour look on Whitman’s face only draws in tighter, and Malcolm’s out of patience. He plunges his hand into his coat pocket, withdrawing two pristine photos. One he ripped directly from the evidence board - illegal, but who cares? - a shot of one of the victims’ blood-coated, exsanguinated body. The other is a snapshot of Dani, her dark curls blowing loose in the wind, captured mid-laugh with JT’s arm thrown around her shoulders. The picture of vitality. Malcolm chose it for a reason. 

“Look,” he says tightly, holding up the two snapshots side by side. Next to him, JT grimaces and turns away. “Look at this. Her name is Daniela Powell. Dani. She’s twenty-six years old. And if you don’t help us find her,  _ this  _ is gonna be her. Who took her, Pastor Whitman? Who has Dani?”

Whitman stares at the photo of Dani, his throat bobbing nervously. Malcolm doesn’t relent. Finally, he crumples and closes his eyes, turning away from the photos. “His name is Jason Snider.”

Malcolm nods stiffly. “Thank you, Pastor Whitman.” As he and JT turn to go, he keeps the picture of Dani out for just a moment longer.  _ I’m going to find you.  _ Then he pushes it back into his trenchcoat pocket with the other and strides away.

“That photo’s classified evidence,” JT mutters to him as soon as they’re out of the church, leading the way back to the car. 

“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t see anything.”

* * *

Gil pulls every string he has in his arsenal and gives out a few more and has a warrant for Jason Snider in less than an hour. Malcolm is still zipping up his vest when the wailing siren ceases its cry outside of a smog-stained brick apartment block with a tip that scrapes the overcast sky. Jason Snider’s apartment sits below even the dingy ground floor room, a two-room setup in the basement that legally isn’t even supposed to be rented out. 

“This isn’t right,” Malcolm says halfway down the stairs, shaking his head. “This is too easy.”

Gil rounds on him, one eyebrow raised and lip curled back, the kind of scathing look that scalds  _ “you’re saying this  _ now?! _ ”  _ into his skin. “Bright, what are you saying? You think Whitman was lying?”

“Bright, do we have the right guy?” JT follows up, his hand resting instinctively on the gun holstered around his waist. 

“Right guy, wrong place.” Malcolm tangles his fingers, wringing them in thought, the gears in his head turning wildly. “You both saw the tape. Dani was screaming. The walls are too thin. Someone would have heard something, would have called someone. Snider would know that. He can’t be holding her here.”

“Bright, we don’t have time for a research paper.” Gil turns on him, massaging his temples instinctively against the onset of what Malcolm had privately referred to with Dani as a Malcolm Migraine. Intense, chronic, and brought on solely by the spontaneous and bewildering actions of Malcolm Bright. “Where’s our girl?”

Gil asked him to skip the research paper but he’s incapable of that. Not when he’s dealing with something so novel, digging so deep into an unfamiliar psyche. “Snider’s a religious fanatic. He thinks that out there somewhere is an all-powerful, omniscient being with a taste for blood and a good sense of revenge. He’s scared. Paranoid. Wherever he’s keeping her, he feels safe. He feels sheltered.”

Something Dani told him, a long time ago on some other case of which his frantic mind blurs the details.  _ Churches are a sanctuary. _

“Dani’s underneath the Hill of Calvary First Baptist Church.”

“And you think the congregation can’t hear someone shrieking just underneath their dress shoes?” JT asks.

“No. Because it’s not just underneath them. It’s further down, a lot further down.” The map sketches itself out in his mind, unfurling its corners for his roving eye. “Hill of Calvary was built on top of old burial grounds. There’s catacombs underneath it, down in the earth and packed with cement. It’s quiet, soundproof, and subtle. No one would ever come knocking.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Gil snaps his fingers to get the attention of the driver. “Hill of Calvary, come on, let’s get moving!”

* * *

It’s dark in the catacombs, but Malcolm moves through it easily. JT and Gil stumble after him, hands on their guns, bumping and tripping their way through the shadows.

“How are you doing this so easily?” Gil mumbles, muffling a swear as his boot audibly stubs against an outcrop of rock. 

“Generations of Miltons were buried here,” Malcolm replies absent-mindedly. “I’ve been here often. Family anniversaries and such.”

“So it’s not just a wacked-out avenging angel down here; we’ve also gotta deal with Grandma Bright’s ghost floating around in her nightgown,” JT mutters, narrowly saving himself from tumbling to the rocky ground.

“Not possible. My grandmother was cremated,” Malcolm offers innocently, picking his way over another crack in the flooring. 

* * *

The metallic tang of blood bites her mouth, sharp like the knife blade dragging a slow and treacherous path down the center of her chest. Dani arches her back against the restraints, at least as much as she can - her strength has been dripping away in the blood draining into the basin just beneath her body and she’s too weak to even cry out anymore. A low, animalistic moan drags itself from her throat, clacking against her teeth and echoing through the stone catacombs only to be swallowed by the concrete before anyone who could come to her aid can hear. 

Snider holds up the knife, letting her own blood, warm and wet and sticky, drip down the serrated edge and freckle her body in tiny speckles. “Filthy,” he rasps from behind his plague doctor’s mask, the goggles and beak wavering in her shaky, blurring vision. “Dripping with sin. You have sinned, Daniela Powell. _But the fearful...and the unbelieving...and the abominable...and the murderers...and the whores...and the sorcerers...and the idolaters...and the liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”_

Each word delivers another slash to her body and she grits her teeth as much as she can against it, turning her head away from the knife as far as the restraints allow her to go. Tears trickle down her cheeks and she weeps, no longer ashamed to let him see her cry. “And you are,” Snider says hoarsely, his voice low and lilting and sickeningly honeyed. “You are a coward. And an unbeliever. An abomination. A murderer. A whore. A sorceress. An idolater. A liar. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to save your life!”

“Then stop killing me,” Dani barely manages to whisper, her eyes locked upon the rough and unforgiving concrete ceiling above her head. No one will ever hear her scream. 

“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Snider bends down, scoops up the basin, cradles it reverently in both hands. Dani closes her eyes, wishing she could cover her ears as the blood sickeningly sloshes into the bathtub he’d drawn for her from her own veins. 

Then there’s something else; wood under her hand. She feels it from the rough fibers, the unsanded splinters threatening to plunge beneath her abused skin _. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,”  _ Snider whispers, and then there’s cold iron in her palm, her fingers gently pressed flat against the wood. That’s something sickening about it, how delicately he handles her when it’s his hands on hers. “By your wounds may you be healed, Daniela Powell.”

She puts it together a second before it happens but that doesn’t do anything to beat back the pain when he nails her hand to her cross. 

* * *

Eventually the terrain gets too rough for Gil’s aging joints and fight on as he might, his knees won’t carry him over the rough-hewn rock any longer. Finally they convince him to stay back and wait to help them with Dani - there’s a bus ready and waiting for her at the mouth of the catacombs but it’ll still be grueling to carry her through the tunnels. So it’s just JT and Malcolm pushing through together, winding through the old graves.

They don’t talk much. There’s not much to stay. The thoughts are loud enough.  _ What if it’s too late, what if she’s not here, what if I’m wrong, what if we’ve got the wrong guy, what if she’s already dead? _

And then they come to a fork in the road, and they pause at it as one. “What do we do?” JT asks gruffly, the first he’s spoken in nearly five minutes.

“Safer to stay together. Take them one at a time.” That’s what Gil would want them to do. That’s what Dani would vote for if she was here by his side. But part of what Bright brings to the team is refusing to stick to the status quo and so he picks a fork at random. “But we don’t have time for that. We’re going to have to split up. Take one each.”

JT doesn’t look too happy about that, at least from what Malcolm can see in his dim and fading flashlight, but he can’t argue either. “One hour,” he says finally. “Then we turn back and meet up here. Go back for more hands if we have to.”

“Sure,” Malcolm says, without any intention of doing so. “One hour.”

“Good luck, Bright,” JT says finally, and then they separate, and after just a few seconds the concrete swallows the sound of his footsteps in the other fork.

He’s honestly not sure how long he walks the catacombs alone. It feels like forever and nothing at the same time. But at last the flickering light of a torch catches his attention at the end of the tunnel and his hand goes to the gun Gil insisted he carry with him.

And then he rounds that final corner.

He had a plan, going on. Appeal to the religious side of Jason Snider, force him to question who had given him the right to judge those around him, who had tasked him to exact reparations for sin. To hold up his picture of Dani and appeal to his humanity.

Then he sees Dani, half-unconscious, head lolling and face streaked with tears, her blood draining into a basin and her body slashed to shreds and a nail driven through her hand, and that plan, that level-headedness evaporate into white-hot rage.

Jason Snider, gowned in plague doctor attire, looks up at him through those round, fogged-over goggles, and for once instead of a case study, all Malcolm sees is pestilence. There’s nothing in him trying to stop him when he pulls the trigger and executes judgement upon Snider for his sins.

There’s no time to stop for the body, either; Dani is bleeding so much from so many places and she’s still nailed to a clumsy, poorly-crafted cross. Her eyes flutter open when he touches her cheek, and then light up dimly with recognition. “Bright,” she rasps, and she turns her head so that it falls into the cup of his waiting hand.

“Yeah. It’s me.” He shrugs his jacket off and rips a shred of fabric away without hesitation, wrapping it tightly around one of the cuts on her arm. “Dani, I know you’ve already been through  _ \-  _ through  _ so  _ much, but I have to get this nail out of your hand.”

Dani nods, weakly, but determinedly. Her jaw sets. “Somethin’ - somethin’ to bite down on?”

Malcolm fishes in his pocket and retrieves a handheld notebook bound in leather - not much, but all he can offer. “Try this, okay?” As soon as it’s firmly nestled between her teeth, he tugs out one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs his mother insists upon piling on him every holiday. She won’t miss this one. Gritting his teeth, he wraps the piece of white linen around the head of the nail, bracing his other hand against Dani’s arm to hold it down. “On the count of three...one...two... _ three!” _

Dani’s back arches off the stake of the wooden cross and when he retrieves the notebook, there’s teeth marks half an inch deep in the surface. But the nail comes out as cleanly as it could given the circumstances, and Malcolm quickly wraps up her hand in the cotton handkerchief to protect the gaping wound. 

That’s all he can do by the light of a dying flashlight, so he gives her a moment to recover and then then wraps the remainder of his jacket around her shoulders. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” he promises, and somehow he finds the strength to pick her up and carry her towards the door. Her breath is warm on his neck and reassuringly steady and as he carries her away from the cross and the corpse, she whispers his name once more into the scratchy cover of his bulletproof vest.


	4. and we are not alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, kids, we all had our doubts, but i did it. this is the last chapter of i'm coming! stay tuned for more of that good stuff, and as usual, follow my tumblr @gay-writes-with-mac for fun stuff like fic updates and announcement posts

“Bright,” Dani rasps again, her head lolling against his shoulder. He looks down at her - her eyes are glassy and unfocused.

The presence of mind she showed when he pulled the nail from her palm is gone, and they’re losing her. She chuckles softly, a pained, breathless sound scratching from her throat.

“Yeah, Dani?” His arms are aching from the strain; adrenaline is leaving him and exhaustion weighs him down like lead. She gets heavier in his arms with every step.

“Your eyes - ‘re really blue…” Her hand curls around the strap of his vest, leaving a streak of blood down his shirt. “Bright, I don’t - I don’t feel good…”

“I know.” He twists his neck, drops his head down to press an awkward kiss to her bloodied temple. There’s so, so much blood. And she’s warm, too warm - her skin burns against his lips. Infection. Sepsis. “Just hang on, Dani. We’re going to get out of here.”

She goes quiet - not reassuring, because her breath rattles in her chest and that’s more unsettling than the rambling. It’s minutes or maybe hours before Malcolm collides with something warm and solid and stumbles back, only to be caught by JT’s hands grabbing onto his forearms.

“Bright, we said an hour-” One of Dani’s curls, stiff with dried blood, trails across his arm and he jerks back. “Is that-”

“Take her,” Malcolm manages, pushing Dani towards JT. “Get her out of here - I can’t-”

The kiss of Dani’s breath against his neck vanishes along with her weight in a second and then JT’s footsteps pound against the concrete, leaving Malcolm in the dust. Arms burning and legs aching, he forces himself forward, staggers out of the fork back into the main tunnel.

JT carries Dani easily, barely panting and leaving Malcolm stumbling ten feet behind him. Finally, a tiny wink of daylight sparks at the very horizon, and it widens slowly like the aperture of a camera to burst into a portal back into the outside world. JT breaks through first, the silhouette of Dani’s curls swinging over his arm. And then Malcolm is through, he’s out, stained with blood and clutching a bloodied, rusted nail in his hand.

Strong hands cup his face - Gil’s. His eyes are sparkling with something that looks suspiciously like tears. “Bright - medic! I need a medic over here!”

“Not to worry,” Malcolm manages, gesturing vaguely at the blood spilled over his front. “It’s not mine,” he adds, right before he passes out cold on the concrete.

* * *

When Malcolm comes to again, he’s clean of blood and chained securely in his own bed. Soft cotton brushes against his skin; someone changed his clothes and now he’s in a plain t-shirt and sweatpants.

He holds up his hands. Not a speck of Dani’s blood under his nails.

Being washed clean is what makes him finally feel guilty.

Everyone had always said he’d be a killer just like his father, hadn’t they? And he’d really thought he could prove them wrong. He had for a long time. He’s lived every second of his life in rebellion, casting every stitch against the grain. He was born to be a killer so he caught them instead. He was born to care for nothing so he cared too much. He was born to not know love and so-

It hits him like a punch in the gut and doubles him over the same way; it kicks the breath out of his lungs. Because it was all for love, wasn’t it?

He didn’t kill Snider because he hated Snider. He killed Snider because he loves Dani.

He thinks about it now and even miles away from that underground lair, a fabric beak and goggled eyes and an ankle-length black cloak nothing more than a nightmare lurking in the past, Snider’s body cold in the morgue; it still fills him to the brim with a white-hot rage. It sets every nerve on fire, it encroaches on his vision, ringing it in fuzzy black. A part of him that drips with ooze and squirms inside him like a tapeworm hisses in his head that _a bullet in the head was getting off too easy._

His phone rings on the bedside table and he startles badly enough that he sweeps it to the ground. Cursing under his breath, Malcolm jumps out of bed to grab it, shuddering at the cold floorboards under his bare feet. He takes the call before he checks the ID, his feet carrying him of their own accord across his loft. The pacing burns the edge off the anxiety. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. “This is - this is Bright.”

“Thank God, kid,” Gil mumbles from the other end of the line. “I’m on my way to get you now. Be ready by the time I’m out front.”

“What’s - Gil, where are we-” He’s still sluggish from sleep, mind swimming in a cesspool of its own creation, and the pieces of the puzzle hover aimlessly, refusing to come together.  
“It’s complicated,” Gil says briskly. “JT led us to Snider’s body. We had to keep you under house arrest until Dani woke up to get her side of things.”

Malcolm looks down - for the first time, he registers the chunky black bracelet around his ankle. God, I hate these things. “She - Dani’s awake?!”

“Briefly,” Gil replies. “She’s not out of the woods yet, but our girl’s been fighting hard. She asked for you before she went back out again.”

“But Gil-” Malcolm stammers helplessly. “Snider-”

“Kid, Dani explained everything. She couldn’t have been clearer.” Gil’s voice softens slightly with sympathy. “It was a clear-cut case of self defense. Dani was running out of time. If you’d tried to talk him down, we could have lost her. You made the right call.”

“Gil,” Malcolm says hoarsely. “I shot a guy in the head and I didn’t even stop.”

“Bright, I want you to listen to me, and I want you to listen to me good.” Gil’s voice turns dead serious. “You saved Dani’s life and you stopped a serial murderer determined to kill off as many young women as he could. That is what you did two days ago. The NYPD knows that, Dani knows that, and I know that. This does not have anything to do with the Surgeon. It has everything to do with Dani. Do you understand me?”

Malcolm nods, and it takes him a second to remember that Gil can’t see him over the phone. “I, uh - yes. Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Gil’s voice softens again. “Now, get dressed. You have ten minutes.”

* * *

Malcolm is still straightening his tie - for the tenth time - when Gil pushes open the door to Dani’s room. It was the last thing he had the energy for but he put on a suit anyways - it was how she was used to seeing him. How it would be easier for her to see him now.

She’s asleep; Gil had said she would be. It’s oddly peaceful, her eyelids closed without even the faintest flutter. Her wounds had been stitched up; they look almost less gory now in the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital, neat sutures instead of gaping red grins. Her curls fall loose around her shoulders, framing her face; as if in a trance, Malcolm reaches out, gently brushing one away from her eye and back behind her ear. Her skin is still warm to the touch - too warm. “She’s...she’s still septic?’

“She’s been responding well to antibiotics and steroid treatments,” Gil supplies. “She’s been in daylight for two days, Bright. Give her time. She’s lucky to be alive as it is.”

“She was awake when I found her.” Malcolm finds her hand - the undamaged one - atop the thin white linen blanket. Her fingers are curled limply and he lets his knuckles brush over hers. “She was - she was clear. She was talking…”

“Edrisa dated the puncture wound in her palm to minutes before you found her,” Gil offers. “There was adrenaline coursing through her veins. Her brain was trying to keep her awake, keep her alive. That, plus the shock of seeing you must have cleared some of the fog.”

“It was a nail,” Malcolm says hoarsely, gently folding his hand into Dani’s. Her fingers sit limply in his palm. “It was a nail that went through her hand, Gil. He nailed her to a cross.”

Gil takes in a quiet, sharp gasp of breath. Malcolm doesn’t turn to look at him. “Can I be alone with her for a little bit? Please?”

Whatever Gil says next doesn’t quite reach him but his footsteps do and then he’s alone with Dani, holding her hand.

It could be minutes or it could be hours later, but her hand twitches suddenly in his, and Malcolm jumps just in time to see her beautiful brown eyes flutter weakly open. “Bright…?” she whispers weakly, and her hand tightens - not much, not with strength, but it tightens - around his own.

“Hey, hey, shh…” He’s no doctor but he’s fairly sure she shouldn’t be wasting her strength trying to speak. His hand locks around hers, squeezing back as tightly as he dares. She feels fragile. It reminds Malcolm of when he was a child and Ainsley knocked over a lamp. It had fallen to the floor and shattered and he’d spent an hour carefully stacking the ceramic pieces back together. He’d rebuilt the original shape, but the cracks still showed - and even the slightest gust of wind could knock it all back down again. “You’re okay. You’re safe here.”

“Gil said...Gil said you carried me.” Dani rasps hoarsely, her eyelids already hanging heavy. “‘M I…’m I heavy…?”

She barely laughs, a pained chuckling that makes Malcolm’s own throat tighten up in sympathy. Then her face scrunches up and she squeezes down on his hand, tight this time, her nails digging into the side of his palm and leaving perfect crescents behind. _"Malcolm,”_ she manages - she never calls him by his first name - just before the first tears drip down her cheeks.  
He hurries to brush them away with his own thumb but more only flow to take their place. “C’mere,” Dani manages through quiet, shaky sobs, tugging softly on his hand. “Stay with me, Malcolm.”

The hospital bed is just barely wide enough for the two of them but Malcolm manages to find a space, and Dani curls up under his arm, her head on his shoulder and her tears dripping into his suit and her curls tickling his nose. Gentle, careful not to knock her for fear of hurting her, Malcolm drops his head to press a feather-light kiss to her fevered forehead. “It’s okay, Dani,” he says softly, and tears are still dripping down her cheeks even as her limited strength runs out and he feels her start to go limp against him once more. “Get some sleep.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”


End file.
